When it comes to letter writing, do artists resemble their letters? Yes, except when they don't. So wrote Ned Rorem in his 1998 review of Prokofievs letters. Over the years Rorem has shown us the craft of self-examination in his five elegant and moving diaries that span the last eight decades. But besides the publication of his correspondence between himself and Paul Bowles, he has never published the vast correspondence he shared with a sublime mix of peopleLeontyne Price, Virgil Thomson, Reynolds Price, Angela Lansbury, Judy Collins, Gore Vidal, Cynthia Ozick. In Wings of Friendship, Rorems letters to these friends and to more than 40 others are assembled in chronological order and reveal the range of his interests and the depth of his passionsa heart laid bare through billets-doux.

Rorem is an accomplished artist in two realms, music and literature, in the latter as a diarist as well as an essayist on music. He scandalized America with The Paris Diary (1966) and continued to in several more tell-all diaries focused on intimate encounters with the rich, famous, and beautiful. In Lies (2000), however, he poignantly reflected on his dying lover and many friends who have succumbed to AIDS. This book excerpts the supposed best from the diaries and Lies and re-presents it in three topical sections on the art of the diary, music, and death and acquaintances who have died. The departed he writes about include both people he loved--among them, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, and Frank O'Hara--and some he disliked, such as Truman Capote. Lacking the shock value of some of the books from which it draws, this reader offers instead a touching self-portrait in words that artfully highlights Rorem's writing and thought. -- Michael Spinella

"For 40 years, the diaries of Ned Rorem have been ideal bedtime reading for musicians. This first installment of the new
century, covering 1986 to 1999, parades a few of Rorem's familiar themes: insomnia, self-contradictions, letters to the editor
(some never sent, some never published), and, of course, notes on his own music (including an especially lovely commentary on the English Horn
Concerto ). There are some unexpected anecdotes as well, including one about dinner with Nancy Reagan, an appreciation of Frank O'Hara,
and the chronicle of a long-running dispute with neighbor Itzhak Perlman's air conditioner (the air conditioner wins). Rorem appraises new music,
slamming Boulez, Schnittke, and Bruce Springsteen (who share good company with Beethoven and Mother Teresa), but there is a sudden about-face on
Rorem's former bęte noire, Elliott Carter. This time, however, the tone is darker than before because death is all around. Rorem's parents,
in separate wings of a nursing home, die within months of each other. And above all, the diary covers the long decline and death of partner
Jim Holmes, who suffers from Crohn's disease, cancer, and HIV (he withholds his discovery that he's been carrying the virus from Rorem for
several months). The final third of the diary, when Holmes's pills alone are described as costing $15,000 a year, is achingly sad, but somehow,
Rorem avers, "the purpose of a diary is to evade real life." He thinks that "nobody sings my songs anymore," so it is to be hoped that he was
heartened by Susan Graham's sensational Rorem anthology released in 2000, as well as his 2001 Grammy nomination for "best contemporary classical
composition" for the song cycle Evidence of Things Not Seen. Rorem's prose, as ever, is delightful and instantly recognizable as his alone:
"there never was a Great Man in America, except maybe Martha Graham." --William R. Braun

"A fascinating mixture of wisdom and innocence, as abosrbing as a fine novel." - William Inge

"Rorem's prose is supple, vivid, arresting; his candour is engaging." -- The Times Literary
Supplement

Music from Inside Out

"Ned Rorem, who is without doubt one of the great composers of our time, has a gift for explaining in words - as he does
in tone - what being a composer is like in an era when few composers are liked." - Jay Harrison

"The sections on song writing are especially perceptive; no surprise, since Mr. Rorem is considered by many to be the best
living composer of art songs. The brief musical musings from that now famous Paris Diary are engrossing
enough to make the reader wish for more." -- The New York Times Book Review

"His intelligence never permits him to be blinded to the truth. He is candid to the point of scandal ... racy yet poetic,
earthy yet exquisite." -- The Saturday Review

"Rorem is not only a remarkably creative composer of music, but also a marvelous writer. His self-analysis in his diaries
contains two extremely rare ingredients: a ruthless and utterly uncompromising capacity for examining the elusive and
fascinating self and a poetic approach to such psychological depths." - James Dickey

"Rorem commands a rare gift of immediacy, a flair for verbal poignance. He is never less than credible and creditable.
He is magnificently committed to his own ideals, wondrously immune to cliché." -- The Los Angeles
Times

"This period is particularly interesting, covering the time during which Lions, Miss Julie, and Poems
of Love and the Rain were composed and most of his books written." -- Library Journal

"This diary is as engaging to read as his Paris and New York Diaries were, but it has a new and somehow
moving tone.... Rorem's open-ness about his life, his own art, his view of the art of others (sometimes very full of
idiocentricity and carping, but then what readable criticism is not?), his agonizing about the creative process - all of it
makes for a remarkable set of entries into a continuing record.... [These diaries] may well turn out to be an enduring
twentieth-century document." -- The New Republic

An Absolute Gift

Paul's Blues

The Nantucket Diary

Setting the Tone

Settling the Score

"Ned Rorem is a writer of elegance, grace, wit... a person of sensitive and rigorous intellect to match his
lusts and ambitions." -- The New York Times

"Very few American belles-lettrists can write with as much depth and wit...as Ned Rorem. The admirable questioning and
honesty of his vision are...especially remarkable in his essays on music." - Francine du Plessix Gray

"A marvelous aphoristic candor, winning and vivid." -- The New York Review of Books

"Knowing When to Stop is the scintillating chronicle of how a gifted, remarkable, good-looking young man
from the Midwest grew into a leading American composer, one of the finest craftsmen of art songs." -- TIME
Magazine

"This extraordinary and paradoxical book [is] consistently absorbing and provoking." -- The Washington Post Book
World

"Music, men and crisp memories.... One reads on, paralyzed with pleasure by the flashing intelligence, the exact, colorful
mot, the endless quotability." -- Publishers Weekly

"Mr. Rorem's appetite for life, ideas, language and music is appealingly voracious. It's clear, and we can be thankful for
it, that he doesn't know when to stop." -- The Washington Times

The correspondence of Paul Bowles and Ned Rorem For more than fifty years these two friends have exchanged letters on
a wide variety of subjects, which cover much of
post-War artistic and literary life. Both of the correspondents are writer/composers and, although they saw each other
infrequently over the years, their correspondence reveals a remarkable exchange of insights. Common friends appear
throughout the letters and include Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Leonard Bernstein and William S.
Burroughs, among others. The authors' mutual friend Gavin Lambert has contributed an Introduction. Two hundred copies
printed by hand on Somerset laid paper, the book measure 6 1/1 x 10 ". The typeface is Bembo and the book is bound in
blue linen. -- The publisher,
http://www.elysiumpress.com/ , October 24, 1997